Double Edge Theatre to Preview New Solo Performance SUGA

On March 6-10, Double Edge Theatre will preview its original solo performance SUGA, with the premiere slated for the Fall. The performance is conceived, created, and performed by Travis Coe and directed by Stacy Klein. Travis, a DE Associate Ensemble Artist, began working on SUGA in 2016 as he explored the Afro-Caribbean/Latinx history of his family, and their native lands spanning Belize, Nicaragua, and Puerto Rico. Klein, DE's Founder and Artistic Director, watched some of Travis' early creative process and began working in dialogue together with Travis to develop the material and create this performance. It is an investigation of freedom, and the bounds personal, artistic, societal, and political one must break through to achieve that end. As a caretaker of a museum of memory, Coe touches/reveals/remixes all the aspects of himself as Queer, Black, Latino, and American, to find the path to sing, fly, run - toward Freedom.

Joining the team of SUGA are DE's longtime design collaborator Michal Kuriata and company artists Tadea Klein (costume designer) and John Peitso (music director). The performance is inspired by the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, the paintings and sculptures of Zdzis aw Beksi ski, and the life and work of James Baldwin.

Travis Coe's Statement

When I was a little chitlin' my mother told me, my brother and my sister that we could be any color flower we wanted to be. And that one day we were gonna to grow big, strong and beautiful. And my sister said, I want to be a yellow flower, or maybe a blue flower or maybe a red flower. Like the ones growing in our garden." I knew this conversation was in a dream because we didn't have a garden at my childhood home in New Jersey - only dirt with scatterings of cinderblocks, wood and steel on top of it. And my brother cried out, Gurl! Make up your damn mind already. Listen, I'm content being a rotten brown flower. And when it came to me I said I want to all the colors. I want to be a rainbow of colors. I want to be everything.

Stacy Klein - who I asked to direct SUGA - recently said to me that I was a caretaker of my ancestral memory. I loved that! It gave me a new lens to look at this work and continue journeying through this history with a deep care. To not be afraid to revive, reanimate and ultimately remix these memories and turn them into the alchemical materials to unlock a century of healing. To provide the ingredients for me and my future family to live our lives in an ever-changing and growing garden of freedom.

For tickets and information visit www.doubleedgetheatre.org

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